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Another Day...Another Recipe (SS+ Recipe Ideas)

I started to write out a guide on how to cook asparagus that I learnt working as a chef (to help fund university) on my diary and I was thinking that although there are a few places that you can find recipes on here there are always new posts popping up saying the same things so I wanted a central place to go that had recipes consisting of photos, tips, tricks and guides using only the ingredients and quantities allowed on SS+....so here we are...as of tomorrow I have another 4 weeks on SS+ and I am challenging myself to come up with something new and creative each day...

When I get home from work after a long day I don't always want to cook so I will try and mix it up with quick and easy vs a little more complex...

Wish me luck!

To start you off here is my guide to the perfect asparagus:

1. I never knew where to cut the bottom off at for asparagus but actually you don't cut the end off at all....you take each end and bend it...where it snaps is the natural point of ripeness....
2. Boil in water for 1 minute (although the temptation is to leave it longer trust me....this gives them a perfect balence of bite and flavour)
3. After the minute on the boil drain and if you are serving straight away then great...add you pepper etc. now and serve. If you and not eating now then you MUST cool the asparagus down rapidly by washing in cold water constantly until cold OR give it an ice bath. You don't want to let it carry on cooking and lose that lovely bite!

Mini-Frittatas

So it's day one of the the 4 week cook off challenge I have set myself and I had some prep to do in the form of buying some silicone muffin cases as I thought my masterpiece might stick without oil in a metal tin...

Asparagus Frittatas
Mushroom Frittatas

The great thing about a frittata is that they can be made in bulk and eaten hot or cold so they make a great lunch! Not only that but you can put just about anything in them...there are lots of options on the SS+ list that will work well...I think my next attempt will be with leeks or spinach! I made 8 as that is 3 eggs and a spoon of cottage cheese to meet 2 days worth of protein allowance so you can have up to 4 a day! 4 of them I basically added our vegetable allowance as spring onion and asparagus and the other 4 spring onion and mushroom (although I think the mushroom one didn't need it).

Cottage Cheese Stuffed Chicken

So the original plan today was to make stuffed turkey breast using the sliced kind but when I opened the packet I bought from Sainsburys the slices were really thin and small, not at all like the ones you get in Asda...I recommend those ones, they are much thicker and bigger making them way more suitable for stuffing. Though of course you can just by the breast and cut it yourself.

Back to my original point which was the stuffed turkey breast turned into stacked turkey breast!

It's basically most of your protein allowance of turkey breast (-50g) topped with your allowance of vegetables, in this instance i used mushrooms and spring onion then topped again with 50g of mashed cottage cheese. I was planning on using my new food processor to mush the cottage cheese so I was excited but when I looked at the quantity I realised there wasn't enough to dirty it and used a fork :-( it should have been this point when the turkey gets folded over and maybe even held in place with a tooth pick so its actually STUFFED but...like I said above my slices were too thin and small so I just popped it in the oven as it was.

To be honest I never really liked cottage cheese until I made this. I don't think I gave the flavour a chance just because I didn't like the pearly, chewy texture but when I mashed it up I actually quite liked it and it does add a nice tang and creaminess to a dish. I look forward to more recipes using this!

There are many variations you can do for this dish:
You can use most of your SS+ vegetables and they will work well like leeks, peppers, spinach, asparagus etc.
This works equally well with chicken
Obviously the stuffing doesn't work but if you just top your protein like I did then I'm sure white fish would be good this way

Cottage Cheese Tzaziki

My recipe of the day is grilled chicken with cottage cheese tzaziki!

Let's start with the grilled chicken component as that's the yummy protein. I started by mixing a paste of chilli powder, ground black pepper and curry powder but you can really use any of the permitted herbs and spices! I am not a fan of cayenne pepper or paprika but these work really well. If you really want to go all out you can make your own marinade, unfortunately without some of the niceisies like salt but you could use some of your vegetable alliance to blend up some celery, spring onion and green pepper to mix with your spices and dash of water! Typing that out that out sounds pretty good so I might do that as one of my other recipes...

Take your chicken and cube it, or slice it, or do any other kind of shape with it you want really and mix it in your spice paste. At this point you can leave it to marinade or just cook it then and there. Your options are to grill, oven bake, dry fry, BBQ or put on a griddle pan until cooked.

Next is our cottage cheese tzaziki which is to take only a couple of table spoons of cottage cheese and blend up, adding a little liquid to make a dipping sauce texture. What makes it tzaziki is the cucumber which I grated and then to add a little extra I chucked in some spring onion and black pepper.

You might find you have some of your vegetable allowance left so I opted to fry up a few mushroom in the chicken juices to bulk it up a bit.

Mince Without a Mincer

I am quite proud of the next idea…MINCE! So this isn’t a recipe for a meal idea, not yet anyway, that comes later. As you all know on SS+ you can only have chicken or turkey breast, mince is off the table because of the fat content so that's why I decided on this next culinary adventure.

If any of you are like me then one of the things I miss being able to cook with is mince (be it chicken or turkey at this stage). I was wondering “why can’t I make my own?”. Well I initially started looking at mincers or attachments to food processors etc. and then I wondered do I need a mincer? I’m sure other people do just fine without one and voila…How to Grind Your Own Meat in a Food Processor | The Kitchn! You can do it using just a freeze and a food processor, of which I have both.

I opted to make 4 batches at one time just because there really wasn’t enough in one portion for the food processor to really get a grip on what it’s blending. My wife is on the same diet so this allows me to make a larger quantity than most of you will be doing at home. I started out by dicing my chicken into small cubes and putting in the freezer. As per the instructions I left my chicken freezing until it was “stiff at the edges but still pliable in the middle”, which took about 30 minutes in my freezer.

The next step was to blend the partially frozen meat in the food processor! The result was pretty good although it was more of a meat paste than ground like I expected. Nevertheless, I was happy with my mince, split up the batches and they are ready and waiting to be turned into something yummy. I might try leaving my meat in a little longer next time to see if the texture is any different.

Having mince now available as one of my ingredients means I can make a whole host of new things, some of which I am sure will go on here at some point:
Chili (basically spiced mince as we can’t use tomatoes)
Burgers
Meatballs
Meatloaf
etc.

Chicken Burgers (with Home Made Mince)

The question was: what should I cook first with my home made mince (see recipe above)? And the answer is……*drum roll*…..burgers!

I wasn’t sure whether to have patties with a few herbs and spices and then have a salad on the side, but I am not a huge fan of lettuce so I decided to use my vegetable allowance to have flavored ones. I finely sliced some leeks and mushrooms (about 50/50 in terms of weight) and dry sautéed them with a good sprinkle of herbs that I got from a jar of dried “Italian Herbs” mix. I let the leeks soften before adding the mushrooms as that takes longer to cook.

It was quite hard to accept that all of my vegetable allowance was already used up and I wish that I have maybe left me enough for a small handful of side salad. Too late now though I guess. I took the ground chicken meat that I made and mixed in all of my vegetables before using my hands to make two chicken burgers. I found that as my first attempt at home made mince resulted in something that resembled a paste more than mince that the meat stuck to my hands quite a bit while trying to form the burgers but I got there eventually. These were then dry fried in a decent non-stick frying pan. I put the heat on quite low as I didn’t want to burn the outside before the middle had had a chance to cook through and 10 minutes later I had some surprisingly yummy burgers!

The one thing that I felt was really missing from this was salt. You noticed how lacking it was with your first mouthful but then you can pick up the mushroom and leeks and it doesn’t matter that much.

There are so many burger combinations you can do with your vegetable allowance is you don’t want to save them for a salad like I did:
Fennel, spring onion and green pepper works very well
Green pepper, courgette and celery is nice with spices rather than herbs

Chicken and Vegetable Kebabs

This one isn’t really a new one, for those on a diet it’s pretty much expected that it goes on the list of things to make and it was quite handy that I had all of the ingredients already. Presenting….meat and vegetable skewers! Ok so this one is pretty much a no brainer, and you don’t need the skewers either.

I took my diced turkey (chicken is also good) and my diced green pepper, courgette and mushrooms and a pointy stick and well…just kept adding until it was all used up!

Unfortunately we are limited to the flavorings we can add at this point so I went with my usual spice mix of chili powder (or flakes), black pepper and garam masala. I wasn’t sure what would be best to use here: a paste or a dry season but I used a paste a couple of days ago so I opted for dry today.

My cooking method of choice was the oven but grill pans, bbq’s, grills etc. are all just as good…(bbq would be the top choice). I put them on my baking tray and turned them every 5 minutes to stop them sticking and after 20 minutes we were all done! This is a quick and easy one that the whole family tends to enjoy.

The usual variations apply where you can mix and match your choice of vegetables or permitted proteins!

Chili Stuffed Peppers

I knew it was a long shot when I started but I wanted to see if I could nail chilli! It turns out, you can't really with the limited ingredients we have. I made another batch of home made mince that turned out much better the second time (the trick was leaving it in the freezer a bit longer) and put that in a pan with water a shed load of spices (chilli powder, garam masala, ground black pepper) and leave to reduce. I put water just about covering the meat and topping up occasionally. My aim was to try and make a strong flavored "reduction" but with just meat meant that it didn't become concentrated like I expected so that step was a waste of time. My recommendation is to cook the meat first then add all of the spices.

Once the meat was ready I took a few spoons of blended cottage cheese to act as a sauce and spooned it in two half of green peppers...

Next step is to chuck 'em in the oven on the usual medium temperature (250ish) for 20 minutes...

A far cry from chilli, tastes pretty much nothing like it at all so pretty much classed as a failure but it has been a learning experience and I didn't expect everything to be a masterpiece! What I might do next time is try using one of the spicy tomato soups as a sauce...what this space!

Re: Another Day...Another Recipe

Maybe I was a bit hard on myself over the failed chilli....my wife said she quite enjoyed it. She thought it was sufficiently tasty and not lacking anything like salt...just not much like the chilli we know and love but as a meal not bad...

Cottage Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms

So here is another one that has been done so many times before but it had to be in the repertoire somewhere: stuffed mushrooms! This one is crazy simple...some big Portobello mushrooms (stalk removed) with the stalk removed and filled with some cottage cheese and chopped spring onions (with any extra herbs you want to stick in there)....in the oven and done and dusted!

It takes about 2 minutes to prepare, 10 minutes in the oven. It's a pretty good one if you are hungry and don't want to wait for food or busy and don't have the time to do much prep-work

Re: Another Day...Another Recipe (SS+ Recipe Ideas)

These recipes are very interesting - I have been on this diet for quite some time (Jan - May and restarted a few weeks ago) and have got very lazy with my ss+ meals, which generally consist of a two egg plain omelette and 80g of rocket, which looks like the most enormous meal! I also like to make up a stir fry with approved veg (grated courgette, spring onion, green pepper and mushrooms normally) and either chicken or tofu allowance. I start the stir fry with tiniest amount of one cal spray then top up with small amount of water as it cooks.

What I really fancy is like a chicken fajita type mix - chicken, green peppers, maybe a little bit of Leek and some fajita spice - might give that a go tomorrow. Will take pictures!

Cambridge hiatus for planned elbow surgery 23/05/2013, followed by unplanned emergency gallbladder surgery 20/06/2013 with complications that lead to a much longer than planned break. All better now (finally). Restart 03/09/2013 at 19st 4lb. Have regained 18lb in 4 months off plan, still 75lb/5st5lb down on the start of the year! Going to be at target for Christmas 2013

Scrambled Eggs and Spinach

So today I had lots of time to ponder what I wanted to make as my wife has been playing rather a lot of the new GTA V game :-) We have quite a few different things in the fridge that need using up and I haven't had anything with eggs for over a week so today was scrambled eggs, Spinach scrambled eggs...

I know what you are all thinking: we have no salt and we can't use oil (even spray oil) yet! This is an issue that I have noticed as the salt usually brings out the flavors of a lot of ingredients so anything I make with egg currently tastes mostly JUST of egg. Still, in an effort to mix it up a bit I wanted to add something to my scrambled eggs and came across this recipe to try: Scrambled Eggs with Spinach & Parmesan - Bon AppétitI started off much as the recipe suggests...whisking my two eggs with some pepper and skipping the salt. Step 2 consists of wilting our 80g of spinach in a pan, which doesn't take very long at all.

So next we scramble our eggs with the spinach...

The recipe calls for a sprinkle of dried red peppers when serving but I didn't think that was one our list so used a pinch of dried chilli...